Nils sighed, as he gazed up towards the sky. He couldn't help it; the sheer scale of destruction before his eyes made him want to cry.
Broken buildings?
Check.
Twenty dead black-clothed individuals with no identifying features?
Check.
A still-cooling giant corpse, lying sprawled about in the central plaza of the goddamn city?
Check.
A tap on his shoulder made him turn around, bringing Morty into his vision. The 28-year old man looked almost nauseous as he struggled to comprehend the sheer scale of work he would have to do. Meanwhile, the Ordinary Division set to work, grabbing injured civilians, bringing civvie corpses to the plaza, and moving (or attempting to move in the giant's case) corpses. Nils sighed. He'd feel sorry for the poor bastard standing next to him after the cleanup was over. He rolled up his sleeves and mentally pushed, and suddenly, his vision ... changed. Everything changed to shades of green and red - green to signify life, and red to show the recent dead. Everything else turned slightly transparent. Already, he could see an injured civilian trapped under a building that the Ordinary Division missed. He jogged over to one of the soldiers and motioned for him to follow, leading him around to where the civilian was. The civilian gasped in pain as he attempted to thank his rescuers, but before he could get the words out, he was chloroformed by the soldier. Knocked unconscious, he was brought to the square. Nils sighed once more, looking around. He could see hundreds of individuals still trapped, though at least a thousand had been brought into the square already. Say what you want about the ordinaries: powerless they may be, but Nils'd be damned if they weren't efficient. As he looked around the plaza, he saw Morty sitting in a chair, having braced himself for the work soon to follow.
Not for the first time, Nils cursed the complete moron who allowed this to happen. There were rules for fighting between supers, and rule number one was never fight in public. This rule should have been ingrained into every powered. As such, he was still not sure how one of the combatants had got the bright idea to summon a fucking giant. In the middle of the fucking city. Anybody stupid enough to try such a thing should have been caught by the Information Department a long time ago. If Citrus hadn't been randomly looking through cameras on his off-time (her fascination with which something Nils still didn't understand), and hadn't immediately shut down all electronic devices in a 20-mile-radius, this incident would have spiraled out of control. Even with Citrus's pre-emptive action, this city-scale destruction would be hard to cover up. Worst case, the Cleanup Unit'd be out of a job. This job was the only thing keeping Nils's head above water, his gambling debts and vicious student loans shredding his finances into pieces. As Nils pointed out the injured humans still stuck underneath buildings to the ordinaries, he spared a glance to see how Morty was doing. At least 20 memory modifications had been completed, seeing how around that many civvies were piled up behind him. Morty himself had his hands placed on the back of a woman's head, his hands slightly glowing. Morty didn't look too tired yet. Good.
As he headed to the next trapped civilian, he heard heavy footsteps clanking behind him. Nils had to stop for a moment as his eyes threatened to roll all the way back into his head. He turned around and saw Kyle, walking towards him.
"Hello!", Kyle shrieked. Nils winced as his hands flew to his ears. Kyle was infamous - not just in the Cleanup Unit, but across the entire organization for being ridiculously loud. He knew from experience, however, not to ignore him - he just got louder. He forced his lips into a smile.
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"Well, hi! Didn't see you there!"
"Oh, come on, Nils! You must be getting less perceptive in your old age!"
Nils' eyes once again attempted to do a 180 degree spin in his eye sockets. He was thirty. This eighteen year old little shit thought anyone above 25 was positively senile. If Kyle's ability weren't so useful in the field, he'd be filling his daddy's shoes - as the child of the president of the Lamton conglomerate, he would have been whatever he wanted to be. Unfortunately for him, he tested positive as a powered. Even then, his father's connections should have landed him on easy street, but the fact that he needed at least 5 minutes for each use of his power and the specialistic nature of his power rendered him simultaneously useless in the more politically active divisions and extremely useful for the Cleanup Unit - their previous materializer was so old he could have gone to sleep one day and never have woken up.
Kyle patted his shoulder. "Nils, Nils, Nils." Each pat landed heavier on his shoulder. "I'm sure you do hard work, but to not even realize I'm here? Maybe it really is time you retire."
Some would have called Kyle cute. Nils was not one of them. He took a deep breath, and attempted to remember what he learned from his anger management courses. In. Out. In. Out. He then spoke in the most amiable voice he could muster.
"Kyle, I'm doing my work right now, and so should you. I'm trying to be more focused, and scan more buildings, so if you could let me get back to that, I'd appreciate it."
Okay, maybe some of his anger leaked through. But it really wasn't his fault. This was the biggest operation Cleanup had had in years. The very fact that someone had gone so far as to summon a giant in the middle of a densly populated plaza showed how fucked up the situation had become. Nils wasn't sure if Morty was up to the task of memory-modifying at least five thousand people. Many of them would only require minor modifications, but it was still a daunting task. Not only that, Citrus and Rene had to pull off a lot of footage altering, much more than they were accustomed to. Citrus would be fine, but every use of Rene's power drained a lot out of her. In addition to that, the Information Department would be hard pressed to justify a 20-mile radius blackout to the public. Or, maybe not. Nils figured they could just blame it on terrorists and sweep the entire thing under the rug.
Kyle apparently got the hint, as he was pushing his hands towards one of the ruined buildings. Kyle wasn't so much a materializer as a restorer, and the broken building in front of him was the first to be repaired by him. Debris pieced itself back together in what looked to be a section of the roof, portions of the wall were un-collapsed, and little bags of junk food levitated themselves back into racks that put themselves back together. It was strangely satisfying, seeing Kyle's power at work. However, Nils had taken enough of a break, and he set himself back to finding trapped civilians.
After at least fifteen civilian rescues, he stumbled upon one that wasn't sleeping. Nils paused. The first one he had rescued also wasn't sleeping. That was odd. Two people that could resist Morty's mental nudge towards sleep in under twenty people? Rare, to be sure. The odds of finding one were around one out of every fifty. As he pulled the man out, the man suddenly jerked his head up. His eyes were aflame with equal parts fear and rage, and he swung a wide hook towards Nils. Taken by surprise, Nils was knocked to the floor, and the man attempted to sprint away. However, he was caught by one of the soldiers, and subsequently chloroformed. Nils rubbed his jaw as he got up, thaking the soldier for capturing the man. The soldier gave an affirmative grunt before he turned around and began dragging the man back to the plaza. Nils gave another quick scan with his Life Vision, as he liked to call it, before turning around and heading to the next portion of the damaged city.
As he worked, Nils became more and more upset at this mysterious person who caused this much damage. This absolute moron who clearly couldn't even remember rule number one. Rule number one. The most basic rule. Because of this shithead, Nils' job was threatened. And ever since 2015, it had been getting worse. Nils has started work as a member of the Cleanup Unit in 2012, a freshie straight out of college. Back then, there was at most one incident per six months, and they were small-scale to boot. Perhaps one heavily damaged building, with three or four more lightly damaged. But now? Nils could count at least five completely destroyed buildings, and six heavily damaged. He didn't envy Kyle his work, that was for sure. The scale of cleanup operations had been getting worse over the past four years, but this? This was a whole new level. And Nils was started to be scared that there would be worse to come.